Sunday
** Invercargill harness, three black type races, first race 11.51am
**
Sha Tin, three Group 1 races, first race 4.30pm NZ time
In Hong Kong.— Fraser Auret knows THE question will be asked again this weekend.
It is every time the world’s fastest horse, Kiwi sensation Ka Ying Rising, races, as he does at Hong Kong’s famous Sha Tin racetrack in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize at 6.25pm (NZ time) tomorrow.
Auret is the Central Districts trainer who bred, owned and educated Ka Ying Rising before selling him for a reported $300,000 after he won his first and only jumpout in New Zealand.
Ka Ying Rising has done his early master proud, winning his past 19 straight races, including the A$20 million Everest in Sydney and earning HK$140m ($30m), an amount he could possibly double before he retires.
So Auret understands when people ask: What is it like to sell a horse like that?
Then followed by the more stinging: I bet you wish you had kept him?
“People ask me all the time,” laughs Auret.
“But anybody who knows the racing game and what it is like being a smaller-time stable, owner and breeder knows the answer.
“So I tell people the truth: ‘This is what we do, and if you want to be known as a real seller, your best horses have to be on the market too.”
It is one of the harsh realities of New Zealand racing, where an owner and/or trainer of a horse can make more money selling it after one trial or race than they will make for years of hard work.
For many, the “whale sale” is as much the dream as the huge training win, and the first usually takes a far bigger chunk off the mortgage than the second.
But Auret is no battler. He has trained an Auckland Cup winner and today takes Khanshe to Te Rapa, where she is a huge chance in the $150,000 Travis Stakes.
“But selling is part of what we do, and I don’t regret it for a moment because he is our flag flyer.
“I was up in Hong Kong when he won in December, and I told David Hayes [Ka Ying Rising’s new trainer] that I am so glad he is with them and in their system, where he is so well looked after.
“I also told him I wish the sale price had had another zero on the end,” laughs Auret.
The quietly spoken horseman says he loves watching Ka Ying Rising race with his family, and they will do so again tomorrow night when he will again be an unbackable favourite from the perfect barrier 3 in the FWD Chairman’s Sprint.
“We love it, and it makes us very proud to know he is our horse and a New Zealand horse,” says Auret.
“But one of the really special things is watching it with our three kids. They absolutely love it, and that is really cool to be part of.”
Ka Ying Rising’s 1200m dash is one of three mammoth races on Sha Tin’s Champions Day, with a rich Kiwi flavour to the day’s other highlight: Hong Kong’s other local hero, Romantic Warrior, is trying to complete the Triple Crown in the QEII Cup at 8.55pm (NZ time).
Romantic Warrior will have his adoring Kiwi jockey James McDonald aboard and faces world-class opponents in Japan Cup runner-up Masquerade Ball and Arc de Triomphe placegetter and Hong Kong Vase winner Sosie.
One place where Auret won’t have to cop THE question too many times is at Te Rapa today, with genuine racing people know how the breed ‘em, sell ‘em game works.
But he faces a different challenge trying to win the Travis with Khanshe, who has yet to win at 2000m.
“She won over 1800m as a 3-year-old, and I think she can get 2000m, but she wouldn’t want the track too wet,” says Auret.
“She has never raced better. She has always been consistent, but her last two runs at Trentham, including in a Group 1, have been very good, so I think she has a big hope.”
The Travis looks light on winning chances, but today’s other Te Rapa feature is anything but, with the Windsor Park Breeders Stakes stacked with flying 3-year-olds and made even more complicated by early favourite Drops Of God drawing so wide.
After getting into the heavy range during the week, the Te Rapa track conditions today will be all-important, so punters would be wise to wait and watch before launching into anything, particularly as the more the track dries, the bigger advantage being handy with the rail in the true position could be.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s racing editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.